News, blues and murders

An update from the writing cave

Hi all,

I have a confession - in between making headway on A Monstrous Theatre - the new wip - I’ve also been drafting a whole bunch of articles for my fabulous publicity manager to pitch to magazines. Because of these articles, I am feeling all inspirationed out on topics to explore in this blog this week. I’m sure I’ll have a renewal of my lightly salted opinions soon, but in the meantime I figured I’d take the opportunity for a more generally newsy update.

So let’s start with Worldcon!

As you may remember, I posted a wee while back about my preparations both work and health-wise for this epic event in Glasgow in mid-August. As an aside, that was the first post of mine to lure out Substack trolls who apparently think I’m scum for … talking about my health, on my own page, which I didn’t force them to read. It was a wierd, but mostly amusing interlude in amongst lots of wonderful comments and messages, so I remain merrily unaffected by people whose lives are so empty they need to fill their time with hate.

Worldcon in 7 photos

Worldcon was amazing. It was five days of being surrounded by a warm bubble of friendship and bookish joy. Getting to hang out every day with friends was such a treat for this rural hermit, and spending time with my amazing publishing team at Solaris was a delight - they are genuinely such brilliant people! The sheer size of the con - over 7,000 people - was a little daunting but the space within the venues, the careful organisation and the home crowd all made it feel warm and welcoming. In an attempt to manage my spoons, I attended very few events other than my own so am incredibly grateful to the Glasgow 2024 team for hosting a digital stream that will remain available to attendees until the end of the year - meaning I can catch up with the many amazing events I missed from my sofa. My panels were all interesting, insightful and fun, my workshop did not happen due to tech issues but we’ll gloss over that, and the Edinburgh SFF Book Party? Remember that? The one I nearly pulled out of because the organisational work got overwhelming?

It went so well folks. I was, and still am, a little blown away with just how well it went, tbh. There were over a hundred attendees & people were getting turned away at the door! Everyone’s speed pitches were brilliant, the audience were enthusiastic and supportive and amazing, and I am (insert swooning gif) so glad it came together. It felt like such a positive communal uplifting experience and I really hope everyone else enjoyed it as much as I did. I didn’t get to chat to nearly enough people, and was a little frazzled with those I did chat to, but if you were there then consider yourself hugged from me for your brilliant support. (and apologies if I was incredibly scatty)

So that was Worldcon.

Word counts, wording and gaining momentum

Post Worldcon I have been slowly getting back into some form of rhythm with my work. I was a couple of thousand words into A Monstrous Theatre before Worldcon, and it took a good few weeks to get from there to the 10k words mark. Slow progress - partly because I was resting through the inevitable health tax, and partly because, well, I hate the first 10k! I always struggle to get going with a new project because I am still finding my way into the characters’ voices and I stumble frequently over gaps in the worldbuilding that I often need to address before I can move on.

Have I told you much about A Monstrous Theatre? I can’t remember!

Well, this book, for my sins, used two Points of View that have taken a little jiggerypokery to get right.

Ariadne is the main PoV - a disabled costume designer largely confined to an apartment in the attic of the Theatre Of The Tides - a faded baroque theatre in a half-drowned seaside town full of vagrants and smugglers. Whilst having limited access to the world, she’s also clever, observant and compassionate, and when I started writing her, she felt very flat because she was just nice, you know? So I had to dig a little deeper into her stubbornness, her fear of losing her refuge and her willingness to ignore terrible things to protect herself. That’s when her voice started to feel more interesting and fleshed out to me, and her scenes began to come more easily.

The second PoV (why am I doing this to myself?) is a collective voice of the group of orphans who have been taken in by the Theatre. Writing a collective first person plural voice, which still contains the individual voices too, and which is also kinda prone to fantastical imaginings … it’s been captivating from the start, unlike Ariadne’s, but it’s taken a lot of fiddling and staring at walls to get the right structure for the voice to work. I think I’ve got it now, roughly speaking, and am having a blast with this fey wee herd of mad children.

Today I hit the 20k marker in the book, the first murders have happened, we have people Acting Suspiciously TM and other people brewing secrets. Although I imagine I’ll hit my usual ‘I can’t write it, it hates me’ wall at 30k words, for the moment I’m freewheeling along having a lot of fun. It is so nice to be drafting again. Of the last 12 months, I’ve spent 10 of them editing four different projects (3 novels, 1 novella) so omg the relief to be drafting, I cannot express it!

I am awaiting edits on The Salt Oracle from my lovely editor at some point, but honestly I am in no rush. I’d love to get to around 40k words at least on Monstrous Theatre before having to set it aside, as it’ll then be far easier to get back into than in the middle of the 30k slump. I have an extremely vague target of a complete draft by the new year, but that’s going to depend on the size of the Salt Oracle edits, so we’ll see. For now, the wording is going well, the recovery from Worldcon is also proving fairly smooth, and I’m happy.

Some random garden colour

Autumnal woes

… I am happy, aside from the fact that autumn has apparently arrived in Scotland. The swifts have left us for southern skies, the starlings are murmuring and the garden is filling with seedheads and fallen fruit. The nights, as they say, are drawing in apace which always fills me with a very real sense of dread for the dark months ahead. I am not a high latitude bunny, what can I say? In fact I suspect I’m more hedgehog - overcome with the autumnal urge to gather leaves in a hedge and sleep.

In between the changing season and the post-summer hols/worldcon health dip, I am trying to make the most of any sunshine, watching the swallows gather and the butterflies swarm the plum tree. I’ve also retreated into comfort reads and popcorn reads. I think some of that is to free up my brain to find the voices of this new book, but some of it has also been the need for easy, effortless book hugs, you know? We’re not quite at blanket weather, but I’ve been needing book blankets aplenty!

Not popcorn reads at all, but I have also recently loved The Bone Diver by Angie Spoto - we’re doing a couple of events together around both our book releases and I am going to adore chatting with Angie about her dark and beautiful stories. I’m now about to dive into Gorse, by Sam K. Horton, which is full of the fae, Cornish moors and explorations of faith and superstition which could not be more up my street if it tried.

Thank you for reading this rambling edition of the blog! Let me know what you’re reading, how you’re marking the change of seasons, and whether you too are genetically 70% hedgehog!